F
}
f
Enclosure
302
40735
297
Public Works Department,
7th. February, 1912.
Rers 23 DEC 12
Sir P.J.D.Lugard, K.C.M.G., C.B., D.S.O.,
Governor of the Colony of Hongkong and its Dependencies.
Honoured Sir,
We your humble petitioners would beg to submit
the following for Your Excellency's favourable consideration.
(a). Owing to the increased cost of living it has become
almost an impossibility for your petitioners to live decently
as becomes our position, on present salaries, which at the best
of times we consider inadequate.
(b).
Your Petitioners are men who have devoted years
of their lives in acquiring practical knowledge in their various
callings, in order to qualify themselves to hold
positions
such as they now occupy. Taking this fact into consideration it
must readily be admitted that the present scale of salaries is
enormously inadequate and not at all in keeping with the
responsibilities imposed. Nel ther does it bear any comparison
with the salaries paid in other departments, in which abilities
required and the responsibilities imposed are much lower.
(c).
We would humbly submit to Your Excellency that we be granted an increase of salary of at least 50% on the present scale for all grades.
Trusting to merit favourable consideration for
which your petitioners will be ever grateful we beg to
subscribe ourselves.
>
Your Excelleny's Most Obedient
Servants
Overseers of the P.W.D.
(Here follows 22 signatures).